


I got rescued by a time travelling cryptid and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

by squireofgeekdom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 02:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: “We should have a club.” Roller says, either apropos of nothing, or demonstrating an uncanny knack for mind reading.Anode looks up. “A what?”“A club.” Roller repeats. “Y’know. A ‘I got rescued by a time travelling cryptid and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’ club.”“A lousy what?”
Relationships: Anode & Roller (Transformers), Anode/Lug (Transformers), Lug & Roller (Transformers)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	I got rescued by a time travelling cryptid and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

**Author's Note:**

> A fic for Lugnode Week!

Here’s the thing about being rescued by an urban legend, stuck in deep freeze for a few eons, waking up on a planet surrounded by a bunch of total strangers, resurrecting your dead wife who you’ve been hallucinating, and then having those total strangers try and get all of you a way off the planet, instead end up teleporting a moon inside the planet from an alternate dimension, and then try and find _ another _way to get you off that planet: there is no ‘thing’ about any of that. No one writes a guidebook to ‘so a cryptid stole you out of time and now you and your wife are stuck among the buck-wildest group of people you’ve met since the last time you were on Taban: here’s what’s next.’ 

If she had a shanix for every time all of _ that _ had happened, she’d have one shanix, and _ that would be weird enough _.

One shanix would not be _ nearly _ enough money for _ any _ of this. 

But, if she _ had _ at any point prior to this thought through that _ particular _ chain of events, she probably wouldn’t have guessed that she’d end up with so much _ downtime. _

That’s what happens when nobody knows who you are - or, well, the one that does doesn’t exactly trust you - and, well, it’s not like you’re a ship engineer, anyway. 

Not that she’s complaining, she considers, as she kicks her feet out in the grass, careful not to disturb any of the flowers. And she’s not the only one in the same boat - the big guy, Roller, is kicked out next to her. Lug had gone to take samples of the Necroworld - to clear her head, really, Anode’s pretty sure, which left the two of them as Team ‘nothing better to do’, staring at the sky and the flowers.

“We should have a club.” Roller says, either apropos of nothing, or demonstrating an uncanny knack for mind reading.  
  
Anode looks up. “A what?”  
  
“A club.” Roller repeats. “Y’know. A ‘I got rescued by a time travelling cryptid and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’ club.”  
  
“A lousy _ what _?”

“Oh - it’s a - ‘human’ thing?” When Anode shrugs, Roller adds, “Apparently they’re aliens on a planet a lot of the ‘Bots spent time on.”

“Oh, that’s what Swerve keeps bugging me about. Kept saying that we needed to watch his highlights of human media to get up to speed. To be honest, I kind of thought he was making it all up… I mean, a bunch of aliens who make machines that look like our alt-modes, just by pure coincidence? Sounds like crazy science fiction.” 

“Yeah, you’d think,” Roller says, “Some of the media stuff isn’t that bad. They’ve got this one, about a guy who saves a bunch of people, but then gets frozen in ice, and then he wakes up years and years later…” Roller trails off for a moment, then shakes his head. “It reminded me of the old Captain Iacon films. And they’ve got their own Legend Smashers show down there too, looked like,” he grins, caught up in memory for a moment, then adds, “Ratchet says they’re real too, he was there, and I trust him.”

“... Which one is he, again?”  
  
“He’s white and red -”

White and red is a weirdly popular color scheme around here, but since the bot Roller’s talking about isn’t Swerve - “Oh, that one - the Captain’s conjunx?” she asks, thinking about the pretty bot with all the swords --

\-- look, she should probably remember his name, but the loud captain - Rod-something - had been freaking out and shouting so much after the guy had passed out - or _ whatever _ that was - it had all kinda gone in one ear and out the other. There was probably an R somewhere in the name he had been yelling? Enough miscellaneous authority figures shouting their own variants on ‘Stop, thief!’ had kinda turned ‘shouting’ into an instant tune out button, and --

“What?” Roller resets his optics, startled. “Oh,_ Drift! _ No, no, Ratchet’s the,” Roller puts his hands in the shape of a square, “one, the medic with the grumpy face,” Roller adds that last part with a fond grin.  
  
“Oh _ that _one.” Anode says - she tried to keep track of ‘medics who didn’t already hate her,’ so she does remember that face, and she makes a note to remember that name this time - “He’s a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, he was." Roller says, with a pained smile. "Was and is, I think,” he adds, with a chuckle that isn’t as lighthearted as Anode thinks he’d like it to seem.

Anode elbows him. “What’re you going on about a club for, then? You actually _ know _people here. More than we can say.” She says, with a nod off in the direction of where Lug had gone.

“Didn’t Velocity say she -”

“Doesn’t count, I still don’t think she trusts me yet. Not exactly friends from before -” she waves a hand vaguely to indicate ‘all of that’

Roller looks out in the same direction, out into another field of flowers, and shrugs. 

Anode looks over at him. “Besides,” she adds - it’s been a good long while since she’s done ‘reassuring’ for anyone other than Lug, and it’s much harder to play it with someone when she doesn’t have a few eons of knowing how they tick under her belt. She gives it her best shot though. “You’re pretty easy to be friends with.”

“Yeah, well, a few million years missed by way of time travel…” Roller says with a shrug, “that’s why the club, see?”

“What club?” Lug walks back to the two of them from where she had been taking geological samples.

“Roller wants us to have a -” she looks over to Roller for suggestions, then continues when he doesn’t chime in, “- Necrobot rescuees club.”

“Well,” Lug says with a tilt of her head, “I wouldn’t exactly be in a _ Necrobot _ rescuee’s club…”

“Honorary member,” Roller says, sitting up a little so he can reach over and pick Lug up. She laughs as he tosses her into the air, before catching her gently and setting her down between him and Anode. “Anode brought you back just about right after, you’re in the same boat with the rest of us.”

Lug ticks it off on her fingers. “Time displaced, disoriented, and surrounded _ almost _ entirely by total strangers.” She looks at Anode on _ almost, _and smiles.

“That’s the one.” Roller says.

Anode looks at Lug, and thinks about the conversation they’d had, after Lug had been properly back, about why Anode had left her blacksmith’s training, the way she’d felt so much lighter with that secret lifted from her spark, the way Lug’s forgiving arms around her made her feel like she could fly without transforming. 

If being lost in time was what it took for that chance, if being here meant she was where Lug was alive, and they could be together - well, that was a boat Anode would take.

“The ship of second chances,” Anode says, reaching out to take Lug’s hand, and hoping the gentle squeeze can say everything she’s feeling, how grateful she is that Lug is here with her.

“Well,” Lug says, squeezing her hand back, “that doesn’t sound like such a bad club.”

Anode smiles. After all, like she told Swerve, she is an adventurer, and adventure knows no time. And she has Lug, the most important person to have on any adventure, and - as she looks over at Roller - she thinks she might not have a bad bunch of people to adventure with.

“Yeah,” Anode says, “I think it sounds pretty good.”

**Author's Note:**

> I first mentioned Captain Iacon and Legend Smashers in my pre-war Ratchet and Roller fic, All I Need (Is A Good Friend), and they're obvious analogues for exactly what they seem to be. :D  
The planet Taban may appear again...


End file.
